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Grammatical Gender in New Guinea

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Grammatical Gender in New Guinea Grammatical gender in New Guinea Erik Svärd Department of Linguistics Degree 30 HE credits General Linguistics Independent Project for the Degree of Master (120 credits) Spring term 2015 Supervisor: Bernhard Wälchli Examinator: Henrik Liljegren Expert reviewer: Eva Lindström Grammatical gender in New Guinea Erik Svärd Abstract The present study investigates the gender systems of 20 languages in the New Guinea region, an often overlooked area in typological research. The languages were classified with five criteria used by Di Garbo (2014) to classify gender systems of African languages. The results showed that the gender systems were diverse, although around half of the languages have two-gendered sex-based systems with semantic assignment, more than four gender-indexing targets, and no gender marking on nouns. The gender systems of New Guinea are remarkably representative of the world, although formal assignment is much less common. However, the gender systems of New Guinea and Africa are very different. The most significant difference is the prevalence of non-sex-based gender systems and gender marking on nouns in Africa, whereas the opposite is true in New Guinea. However, gender in Africa is also less diverse largely due to the numerous Bantu languages. Finally, four typologically rare characteristics were found in the sample: (1) size and shape as important criteria of gender assignment, with large/long being masculine and small/short feminine, (2) the presence of two separate nominal classification systems, (3) no gender distinctions in pronouns, and (4) verbs as the most common indexing target. Keywords agreement, grammatical gender, indexation, New Guinea, Papuan languages, typology Sammanfattning Denna studie undersöker genussystemen hos 20 språk i Nya Guinea-regionen, vilken ofta förbises i typologisk forskning. Språken klassificerades utifrån fem kriterier som användes av Di Garbo (2014) för att klassificera genussystem i Afrika. Resultaten visade att genussystemen var varierade, men ungefär hälften av språken har könsbaserade genussystem med två genus, semantisk genustilldelning, fler än fyra genusindex och ingen genusmarkering på substantiv. Genussystemen är anmärkningsvärt representativa för världen, men formell genustilldelning är mycket mindre vanlig. Jämfört med genussystemen i Afrika är dock Nya Guinea väldigt annorlunda. Den viktigaste skillnaden är den större utbredningen av icke-könsbaserade genussystem och genusmarkering på substantiv i Afrika, medan motsatsen gäller i Nya Guinea. Genus i Afrika är dock till stor del mindre varierat på grund av de talrika bantuspråken. Slutligen hittades fyra typologiskt sällsynta karaktärsdrag i urvalet: (1) storlek och form som viktiga kriterier för genustilldelning, där stort/långt är maskulint och litet/kort feminint, (2) närvaron av två separata nominalklassificeringssystem, (3) inga genusdistinktioner i pronomen och (4) verb som det vanligaste genusindexet. Nyckelord grammatiskt genus, indexering, kongruens, Nya Guinea, papuanska språk, typologi Abbreviations The abbreviations used for the glossings are based on the Leipzig Glossing Rules1. Note that no separating character follows person. I, II, III etc. gender I, II, III etc. M masculine 1 first person N neuter 2 second person N- non- 3 third person NMLZ nominalizer ABS absolutive NNOUN non-noun gender ADV adverb NOUN noun ANIM animate OBJ object ART article PFV perfective C common gender PL plural CL classifier POSS possessive CO1 common 1 gender PRF perfect DEF definite (article) PRO pronoun DEFAULT default gender PROX proximal DEM demonstrative PRS present DEP dependent (verb) PST past DET determiner Q question word DL dual RED reduplication F feminine SBJ subject FUT future SEQ sequential GEN genitive SG singular HAB habitual TOP topic INTEN intensifier TPST today’s past / hodiernal past IPFV imperfective U unmarked gender IPST immediate past 1 See http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php Table of Contents 1. Introduction........................................................................................1 1.1 Purpose........................................................................................................ 1 2. Background.........................................................................................2 2.1 Grammatical gender and indexation................................................................. 2 2.1.1 Theoretical background.............................................................................2 2.1.2 Defining gender....................................................................................... 3 2.2 Typology of gender.........................................................................................7 2.2.1 Overview................................................................................................ 7 2.2.2 New Guinea.............................................................................................8 3. Method and data............................................................................... 10 3.1 Sampling and material..................................................................................10 3.2 Procedure................................................................................................... 12 3.3 Limitations.................................................................................................. 13 4. Results.............................................................................................. 15 4.1 Sex-based and non-sex-based gender systems................................................ 15 4.2 Number of genders.......................................................................................19 4.3 Gender assignment...................................................................................... 22 4.4 Number of gender-indexing targets................................................................ 26 4.5 Occurrence of gender marking on nouns......................................................... 31 5. Discussion.........................................................................................35 5.1 Typological comparison................................................................................. 35 5.1.1 The World............................................................................................. 35 5.1.2 Africa....................................................................................................38 5.2 Special characteristics.................................................................................. 43 5.2.1 Size and shape...................................................................................... 44 5.2.2 Two separate systems of noun classification..............................................46 5.2.3 No gender distinctions in pronouns........................................................... 50 5.2.4 Gender in verbs..................................................................................... 51 5.3 Suggestions for further research.................................................................... 51 6. Conclusions....................................................................................... 53 Appendix A. The language sample.........................................................54 Appendix B. Overview of classification criteria...................................... 55 Appendix C. Samples of gender descriptions.........................................56 C.1 Abau (Sepik).............................................................................................. 56 C.2 Teop (Austronesian, Oceanic)....................................................................... 59 References............................................................................................ 62 1. Introduction Grammatical gender is a well-researched and common linguistic phenomenon. It is widespread in the languages of the word but clusters in families, and although there are geographical patterns, gender systems are often very stable and not prone to borrowing. Traditionally, most typological research has focused on languages in Eurasia and Africa, but important research has also been carried out on other continents such as the Americas and Australia. Less researched is the region of New Guinea, which often has been overlooked in typology despite containing as many as one sixth of all languages of the world. However, in recent years, studies and grammatical descriptions have increasingly shed light on languages with uncommon properties. This includes not least some languages of New Guinea, which have been shown to have exhibit many unusual grammatical phenomena concerning e.g., gender. Despite this, there remains a lack of overviews of New Guinea in general and in particular regarding gender systems in the region. The purpose of this thesis is to counteract this issue by investigating various New Guineas languages which have been observed to have gender. These are then classified by various criteria with the aim to provide an account of gender systems of New Guinea in general. Finally, the results are compared with both the languages of Africa and the world as a whole, and with previous research on gender in New Guinea. 1.1 Purpose The purpose of this thesis is to investigate 20 New Guinean languages, both Papuan and non-Papuan, for which gender has been described and to compare their gender systems in an areal and a typological perspective. Specifically, the intention is to investigate if there are
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